Critical Thinking Blog #3

While Frost does not necessarily utilize modern occurrences, such as war and technology, he emphasizes the concept of individuality and exalts the everyman. Therefore, Frost uses imagery to depict common everyday life. Frost illustrates various aspects of human nature in his work, similar to other Modernist writers, but he utilizes a more classic format. Through his rejection of the more free verse and innovative formats of other Modern poets, Frost showcases the variances in Modernism and the more opened ended aspect in which the author uses the style of their choosing. In “Mending Wall,” Frost portrays the labor in building a wall and the difficulty in getting along with others, more specifically, one’s neighbor:

We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of outdoor game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is pine and I am apple orchard (1390).

In comparison to the likes of Whitman and Eliot, Frost uses less open verse and sticks with a more conventional format. More so than other Modern writers, Frost highlights the individual, which is evident in his depiction of the speaker in “Mending Wall” and their troublesome relationship with their neighbor. He glorifies simplistic and fairly mundane situations in which many people encounter and therefore reveals characteristics of human nature through imagery.